turning

Pluralturnings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of turn.

   Turning carefully, he guided the truck into the narrow space.

   He spent the morning turning the soil before planting.

   Note

   Two Old English lines meet in this spelling. The verb form descends from tyrnende, a present participle whose -ende ending survives in Middle English turnende and turnand before giving way to -ing. The nouns come instead from tyrning, as with the road sense. In use, the participle builds progressives (the Earth is turning), and the gerund follows prepositions (by turning them on a lathe).

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of rotating or twisting something around a point or axis.

   A single turning of the valve released the built-up pressure.

   The steady turning of the millstone ground the grain into flour.

   Similarrotation, revolution, twist, spinning

   Note

   The verbal noun is at its broadest here, and it pluralizes readily. Kipling's Rewards and Fairies (1910) describes a dancer's "wheelings and turnings aside," where the phrasal verb turn aside keeps its particle even as a noun. Henry Petroski, writing on doorknobs in American Scientist (2012), uses the singular for motion around a fixed point: the fulcrum "about which the turning takes place."

3. 3
   nounIrelandUKcountable

   A bend in a road, or a place where one road leads off from another.

   Take the second turning past the church to reach the village.

   He slowed down as he approached the sharp turning in the lane.

   Similarbend, junction, corner, turnoff

   Note

   Directions in Britain and Ireland are given in turnings: take the second turning on the left, the first turning past the church. The word counts the openings off a road, usually with an ordinal, and it goes back to Old English tyrning, simply turn plus -ing. Outside British and Irish English, the plain noun turn covers the same ground.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The shaping of wood or metal by cutting it while it spins on a lathe.

   The turning of the spindle required a sharp gouge and a steady hand.

   Fine turning of the brass fitting left a smooth, even surface.

   Note

   In lathe work the piece moves, not the tool. The wood or metal spins against a cutter held still, which is why turning yields symmetrical, rounded forms. The same verb gives the craft its practitioner's vocabulary: one turns a spindle, and the waste curling off the blade has its own name, the lathe shavings.

5. 5
   nouncountableplural

   A curl or shaving of wood or metal cut away while shaping a piece on a lathe.

   The turnings peeled away in tight golden spirals.

   He swept the brass turnings into a bucket for recycling.

   Similarshavings, swarf, chips

   Note

   A workshop word that normally lives in the plural. Turnings are what lathe work leaves behind on the bench and floor, swept up as a heap rather than counted one by one. Its home is practical, even comic, speech: "The turnings get into your trouser turnups!" Treat it like shavings or filings, with a plural verb.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   One of the four eras, each lasting roughly 21 years, that together make up a saeculum in Strauss-Howe generational theory.

   The authors describe the present period as a turning marked by institutional decay.

   Each turning, they argue, gives rise to a distinct generational mood.

   Note

   This theory gave an everyday word a fixed technical meaning, and in it the eras are numbered. Writers on the theory capitalize them like titles, as in the Fourth Turning, when they mean a particular phase of the cycle. Lowercase turning is kept for the general idea of one era among the four.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   In field hockey, a foul in which a player going for the ball puts their body between it and an opponent trying to play it.

   The umpire blew for a turning as the striker shielded the ball from the chasing defender.

   A clumsy turning near the circle gave the opposition a free hit.

   Note

   An obstruction foul. The offense is using the body, rather than the stick, to keep an opponent away from the ball, and the name fits the movement: a player turns into the space between ball and challenger. In umpiring talk it is a countable noun. An umpire blows for a turning, and a turning near the circle can cost a free hit.

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